She got to the “panaderia” right before it closed and bought a couple of long, skinny loaves of bread for Alana’s supper, then dropped by Jean-Michel’s to take a shower. The water came out in a tepid trickle from an apparatus like a dangling telephone receiver on the...

     To tell the truth, Seely wasn’t as self-sufficient as she tried to appear. She’d all but abandoned her manuscript, her past life having come to seem as irrelevant to her as it was to the parade of passing acquaintances who struck up conversations with her at the...

     Late one afternoon she rounded the small cove on her way to the Flat Rocks on the end of the point. Catalan matrons in bikinis, their breasts like huge urns, lolled on the stony beach, while wiry, naked children and half-starved dogs scampered among the beached...

     That night she dreamed she was standing by a window, gazing out at a forest so dense and dark she couldn’t see beyond the first row of trees. Then, from out of nowhere, two birds appeared, one iridescent red, the other green, their feathers glinting like jewels....

     A week had passed and Seely still hadn’t met Alana’s roommates, who worked in Barcelona as ESL teachers and only made the trip to Cadaques on odd weekends. Alana, in the meantime, was staying at her lover Aaron’s place, so Seely had the apartment to herself. She...

I felt absurd, dragging my suitcase-on-wheels by its strap, like a child with a wagon, into the main square of the town and setting it to rights every time it toppled over on the cobblestones. I couldn’t carry it because my shoulder already ached from the manuscript I...